What's better than a referral from someone in your circle of influence? These are the people who know you well. They're your ambassadors. When they refer to you, you know the prospect already trusts you, which is the first step towards a prospect becoming a customer.

Lone Star Partners is a free community of business professionals dedicated to growing their businesses through referrals. This Web site is a platform to facilitate those referrals.

How does it work?

Identify partners - business professionals you trust with your referrals. Ask if they would agree to be part of your referral network.

Enter your partners' information on the Web site. You also need to say what's special about them that makes you trust them with your referrals.

Visit your partners and show them their listing on the Lone Star Partners Web page.

Make referrals.

What's in it for me?

The system works off the "pay it forward principle" - the more referrals you give, the more you get.

First, when you make a referral, the recipient typically feels a sense of obligation to you. That creates an opportunity for you to deepen your relationship with the partner, to talk about your business and the types of customers you're seeking.

Just in case that doesn't work, the system also broadcasts periodic emails to a database of real estate customers and professionals to introduce partners who are making referrals. Those who make the most referrals are most visible to the community.

Use the system to identify professionals from other referral networks that offer services that would benefit your customers. You get credit for referring to them, too, and it broadens your circle.

Finally, the system has a map-based search engine that the public can use to find local professionals from the Lone Star Partners community. Those who make the most referrals will show up at the top of the search results.

Almost any type of business professional is an eligible partner. (Mortgage professionals are not eligible. There has to be some perk for sponsoring the community.)

We're putting the finishing touches on the Web site and expect it to be ready by the end of May. Until then, start thinking about who you want to be your referral partners.

This part of our Web site is intended for real estate professionals only.